Examples of design and style for advertising of the 19th and early 20th century

Documents featuring the description of innovations in transportation of the 19th and early 20th century [image gallery below]

Embroidered silk postcard [RMS Lusitania]

Archive Encompassing the Golden Age of the Great Ocean Liners. [circa 1880-1930]. Approximately 850 items of ephemera from the golden age of ocean liner travel; including a cloth ticket wallet, numerous menus and passenger list cards from a wide variety of ships and routes, a souvenir handkerchief, deck plans, agent’s timetables etc. All in very good or better condition, minor edgewear to some of the more fragile pieces, essentially forty years or more of historical material, spanning the closing years of the 19th century and two world wars. Very Good to Near Fine.

The history of ocean liners is the history of western prosperity, the lure of emigration and the race for technology to catch up with both. The roots of passenger liners are based in 1818, when the Black Ball shipping line of New York started offering a regularly scheduled passenger service across the Atlantic and realised very swiftly that ticket prices could be increased in accordance with the level of comfort they were capable of offering. Previously buying a transatlantic ticket had relegated the hardy traveller to the same status as whatever other cargo the ship was carrying, indeed often slightly lower status; livestock and produce needed to be carefully nursed through the often perilous journeys, passengers were largely expected to fend for themselves.

The proliferation of steamships after the 1830’s, larger, faster creatures altogether; sometimes able to make the enormous journey in a little over two weeks, led to new and creative methods of utilising space and maximising profit. History changed on July 4th, 1840 when the very first ship to bear the legendary Cunard name, “The Britannia” left Liverpool on a ground (or perhaps sea) breaking 14 day journey to New York. It was for the times the very height of luxury, it travelled with a live Jersey cow on board, and chickens, to provide the passengers with fresh milk and eggs.

The advent of the tourist based pleasure cruise didn’t really take off until the 1860’s and the first cruise voyage to originate in America carried none other than Mark Twain, who characteristically immortalised the experience in “The Innocents Abroad.” By the 1880’s, a decade before the earliest items in this collection, the ocean cruise industry was in full swing; doctors regularly advised sea air and ocean voyages for the improved health of their patients, and the allure of foreign continents was proving irresistible to many as companies started offering “steerage” tickets as a very rough and ready way for the huddled masses to make their way to new opportunity.

The final years of the 19th century saw the advent of the first super liners, Germany initially led the field in creating enormous, painfully luxurious vessels that were effectively the floating luxury hotels we have come to expect today. Able to forge through any weather without hardly spilling a first class passengers cocktail, they became the preferred mode of travel for the super rich; reaching their zenith with the Cunard Line’s floating masterpieces “The Mauritania” and “The Lusitania”, the ships that required their passengers to dress for dinner and offered the romance of fine dining rooms where dinner suited elegance and mouth watering menus were accompanied by string quartets, whilst immaculately turned out stewards glided around supplying every need.

This particular collection contains representative ephemera from the largest and most luxurious lines of the period, and some of their flagship vessels, the one notable exception being, of course, The RMS Titanic, firstly because it should be remembered, Hollywood notwithstanding, that it failed, through little fault of its own, to do what transatlantic liners are supposed to do and secondly because all Titanic material is by definition mementos mori and therefore exists rather beyond its socio-industrial context…drifting more into the sargasso of legend. In the manner of such things however, the phantom of the Titanic is unavoidable and present here are pieces of material related to ships who in any number of ways were influenced and overshadowed by their relationship to the largest and most evocative maritime disaster of the time.

The period covered by this material (1896-probably the 1940’s in the case of a couple of deckplans) encompasses the successes, failures and tragedies of the largest passenger shipping lines in the world; Cunard, White Star, Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen, the Hamburg Amerika Line (notwithstanding the blanket ownership of J P Morgan’s “IMM” after the early 1900’s) and a number of others. It was a period of fierce competition in the arenas of sheer size and speed, and the degree of luxury which could be attained. Norddeutscher Lloyd’s “Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse” was built to rival Cunard’s “Campania” and “Lucania”; White Star’s “Oceanic” was put into play to combat “Kaiser Wilhelm” and so on. It was a period of fierce continental competition; at times the fabled prizes rested with the German lines, at others with the British Cunard liners and eventually the laurels passed to the American lines as more and more US ingenuity and drive was brought to bear on what was essentially the “space race” of the era. The mighty giants of the period; Mauretania, Deutschland, Lusitania, Olympia, Normandie have passed into the mists of ocean going myth, all of them are represented here; in fact, in the case of many of these pieces, this collection will represent their sole representation anywhere. Hardly any of the items in the collection were intended to last longer than the duration of a single voyage and their survival within this archive offers a unique record of the Golden Age of ocean travel. Similarly, outside of the realm of international business rivalry, shadowy political preoccupations began to affect the industry, with the British Admiralty quickly cottoning on to the concept that every ocean liner was a potential warship and subsidised lines like Cunard to build ships like “Lucania” and “Campania” in such a way that would make them swiftly convertible to battle stations in time of war. These two ships alone at that time had the largest triple expansion engines ever built, signifying the summit of achievement in that realm of technology until the inception of the turbine engine.

This archive represents a porthole into a period of unprecedented elegance, prosperity and innovation. Comprising of a tremendous number of items (we believe this to be one of the largest collections of material to come to market for a very long time), spanning a breadth of periods, lines and purposes; from beautifully chromo-lithographed menu cards to deck plans and passenger lists, souvenir programmes, handkerchiefs and fans, ticket wallets and books of postcards; an enormous and attractive collection of postcard ands promotional material spanning not only most of the world but most of the world’s significant shipping lines and a treasure trove of other ephemera and memorabilia.

~RMS Titanic: 2 commemorative cards (1987 and 1991) sent at sea from the resting place of the great liner; stamped with all vessels present and the sigil of ~Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute with hand written co-ordinates of the wreck site and the details of the Russian Research Vessel “Akademyk Keldysh” which carried the Mir I and Mir II submersibles.

~H.A.L.: A group of four further Illustrated menu cards from the “Pennsylvania” during a voyage in January-February 1901

~Cie Gle Transatlantique: Large format photograph of the liner “SS Normandie” under construction noting that the vessel was 1020” feet long. In 1935 the ~“Normandie” was the largest and fastest passenger vessel on the seas. She is still cited as being the most powerful steam turbo-electric powered ship ever built.

~NDLB: A selection of decorative menu cards in card chemise for a voyage by the “SS Berlin”

~Various: A selection of folding souvenir deck plans for ships in the Red Star, Cie Gle Transatlantique and United States Lines.

~NDLB: Beautiful illustrated menu card “SS Columbus”, April 1925. At that time the “Columbus” was the flagship of NDLB and was notable for being almost permanently on hire to Thomas Cook and for being the first liner to have its own swimming pool on deck.

~Cie Gle Transatlantique: “MS Ile De France” Illustrated Passenger List, Le havre to new York, September 1937. The Ile de France was the first refrigerated ocean liner and was thus the first vessel to bring fresh French Brie to America.

~Cunard White Star: “RMS Laconia” Illustrated menu card, June 1937. The “Laconia” was, like it’s previous namesake in WW1, sunk by a submarine in World War 2 on September 12th 1942. The aftermath of the sinking, during which over 1600 people died, became known as “The Laconia Incident.” Kapitanleutnant Werner Hartenstein of the U-156 surfaced after the sinking in order to pick up survivors when he became aware that non-combatants were on board, he requested assistance from U Boat High Command in Germany and several U Boats entered the area flying red cross flags and signalling that a rescue operation was under way. The U-Boat convoy, fore-decks laden with survivors, lifeboats in tow and still flying Red Cross flags headed towards a neutral exchange point. Unfortunately, a US B-24 Liberator, despite the resistance of it’s crew and the frantic radio signals of Hartenstein was ordered to attack the U-Boats. The U-Boats were forced to dive and abandon the survivors, some of whom were later picked up by Vichy French naval ships. Admiral Donitz, as a direct result of the Laconia Incident rescinded any previous directions to do with rescuing survivors of enemy ships. Hartenstein and his crew were killed a few months later.

~Cunard Line: “RMS Aquitania” card booklet from the 1920’s. Aquitania was the last four-funnel steamer, and noted as being one of the most beautiful ships afloat, and was the longest serving commercial ocean liner at the time of her retirement in 1950

~Cie Gle Transatlantique: “La Provence” fold out cutaway diagram of the liner in card wraps showing many of the joyous luxuries available on board.